connachta wrote: Yesss no BP for Cardiff. No BP for Treviso either. European dream still on (7th overall)

Talking about fighting for 7th spot in October is depressing. Connachta you might be right, it might be reality because as a team we haven't performed.
Andy Friend has said that he's in both (Pro14 and Challenge Cup) to win.
To win the Challenge Cup we got to make the quarter final. Winning the group looks unlikely, and were 5th in getting one of 3 best runner up. Not ideal.
To win the Pro14 we need to make semi final. Top 2 in the conference. We are already 7 points behind the Ospreys for second place, with both Cardiff and Munster chasing them down too.

Not much will be made of the Dragons on Saturday as that should be a 5pointer. Dragons are a very poor team with a very poor coach. When we come back after the break and have 2 games in South Africa, if we get 9+ points against those two poor teams, then we might be on the right track. Currently we would be lucky to finish 7th and that Heineken Cup spot

Yesss no BP for Cardiff. No BP for Treviso either. European dream still on (7th overall)

we shouldn't overreact. We were poor but the pack shows he has the potential to get the upper hand. The whole back-line failed IMO

Wonder how long it will take for the players to oust friend once he tells a few home truths like KK did????????????????

Just to put things into perspective, taking the games thus far it could be argued we threw away 9 points by either sloppy defence and/or an inability to convert chances.

3 points v Glasgow/Ospreys
1 BP v Scarlets/Ulster
and a case could be made that we should have managed a LBP v Leinster

This brings us back to a position much like last season where we weren't losing games by much but we were still losing them, the likes of the Cardiff games Edinburgh at home are a few that spring to mind. While I still believe we are in better shape than last season we need to actually start putting this potential into results or we're going to be back in the CC next year wondering should we be focussing on the league or what again, we seem not to be able to get the most out of our 2nd string players anymore, and lots of young players have regressed in the past couple of seasons. Dragons game now becomes huge and anything other than 5 from that is a real disappointment.

swift4prez wrote: This result is not far from the Saracens result, losing 64-6 and they missed about 8 conversions. Ospreys had 20 players injured, they got a squad around 45 players, which means they had around 25 fit professional players.
This was a poor poor performance. Its the same mistake KK made last season. F'king chopping and changing the team each week.
I believe the words Nigel used on the Craggy Island podcast was for the Sale game was that players were given a 'Tactical rest'.
A rest from what? Have you ever heard a player say he didn't want to play, that he wanted a rest. No! If a player has taken a knock then he should be rested.
Even a few season ago even Rodney Ah You hit something like 20/22 games. If he can do it, anyone can.

After the two wins against Ulster and Bordeaux, only 8 players made the starting 15 for the sale game. Delahunt, Carey, Fainga'a, Copeland, Blade, Niyi. Cannon moved from 4 to 5 and Godwin moved from 11 to 12.
After the 'Tactical rest' vs Sale, no surprise only 6 from that starting 15, started against Ospreys tonight. Buckley, Dillane, Farell, Niyi, ToH and Boyle moved from 6 to 8.

You might be thinking 'Oh we might of gone back to the team that won against Bordeaux. No! Only 6 from tonight started against Bordeux.
Last 3 games we started 26 different players. Its not like we started our best team against Bordeaux and Ospreys, and sent completely different team to Sale. As above shows, we made 7 changes and 9 changes. How are these players meant to gel. We have a nice squad, we can add 2 players here and there and they will click into place but not half a team every week.

I'd love to know who Nigel and the coaches are resting these players for? Could they not survive the Sale game, Ospreys and Dragons before having 3 weeks to rest?!
Are we resting players to beat Leinster, Munster and Ulster?
Are we resting players for when we make 2 trips to France in Challenge Cup where me might already blown our chance to get out of the pool?
Are we resting players so instead of fighting for a semi final in Pro14 we are fighting for 3rd spot? (already a gap opening)
Or are we resting players for when April arrive, we have Zebre away, Cardiff at home and Munster away so we can sell a few season tickets?

I'd really love to know what we are resting players for at the expense of losing games.

Just pick the bloody best team, pick the guy who's killing it at training. Only rest a player if he needs it.
I don't care if we signed a player and if he never wears the senior jersey. If he's not the best player available, then he shouldn't be on the pitch. He has his chance at training to show the coaches. I'm not aiming that at any player. I don't care what age he is, where he's from, what he done in past just give Connacht the best chance of winning by picking the best team.

Player workloads are managed based on data we have no idea about as fans. Also, players (Anthony Watson for one) have come out and said they want to play less games. Rotation is a part of rugby, it’s not an excuse for poor performances.

Going on team selection Friend has played weaker teams in the 2 challenge cup games, we had our strongest team out last night (bar a few injuries) but they did not play well so maybe that is not our strongest team after all? we dont have the crafty players needed to win last nights type of game, its pretty similar to last season, I dont see a huge amount of improvement tbh

This result is not far from the Saracens result, losing 64-6 and they missed about 8 conversions. Ospreys had 20 players injured, they got a squad around 45 players, which means they had around 25 fit professional players.
This was a poor poor performance. Its the same mistake KK made last season. F'king chopping and changing the team each week.
I believe the words Nigel used on the Craggy Island podcast was for the Sale game was that players were given a 'Tactical rest'.
A rest from what? Have you ever heard a player say he didn't want to play, that he wanted a rest. No! If a player has taken a knock then he should be rested.
Even a few season ago even Rodney Ah You hit something like 20/22 games. If he can do it, anyone can.

After the two wins against Ulster and Bordeaux, only 8 players made the starting 15 for the sale game. Delahunt, Carey, Fainga'a, Copeland, Blade, Niyi. Cannon moved from 4 to 5 and Godwin moved from 11 to 12.
After the 'Tactical rest' vs Sale, no surprise only 6 from that starting 15, started against Ospreys tonight. Buckley, Dillane, Farell, Niyi, ToH and Boyle moved from 6 to 8.

You might be thinking 'Oh we might of gone back to the team that won against Bordeaux. No! Only 6 from tonight started against Bordeux.
Last 3 games we started 26 different players. Its not like we started our best team against Bordeaux and Ospreys, and sent completely different team to Sale. As above shows, we made 7 changes and 9 changes. How are these players meant to gel. We have a nice squad, we can add 2 players here and there and they will click into place but not half a team every week.

I'd love to know who Nigel and the coaches are resting these players for? Could they not survive the Sale game, Ospreys and Dragons before having 3 weeks to rest?!
Are we resting players to beat Leinster, Munster and Ulster?
Are we resting players for when we make 2 trips to France in Challenge Cup where me might already blown our chance to get out of the pool?
Are we resting players so instead of fighting for a semi final in Pro14 we are fighting for 3rd spot? (already a gap opening)
Or are we resting players for when April arrive, we have Zebre away, Cardiff at home and Munster away so we can sell a few season tickets?

I'd really love to know what we are resting players for at the expense of losing games.

Just pick the bloody best team, pick the guy who's killing it at training. Only rest a player if he needs it.
I don't care if we signed a player and if he never wears the senior jersey. If he's not the best player available, then he shouldn't be on the pitch. He has his chance at training to show the coaches. I'm not aiming that at any player. I don't care what age he is, where he's from, what he done in past just give Connacht the best chance of winning by picking the best team.

TOH should be dropped hes a fur coat no knickers type player, Joe is 100% right never to pick him time to ship him on

That was the first time this season I was disappointed with the Connacht performance. We were absolutely terrible, looking at the team we should have won by 10 to 15 points. I really have to put it down to the players on the pitch. Marmion is not our best 9, Blade should be our starting scrum half. While Carty has been good most of the season, tonight’s performance was shocking. It’s a case of one step forward and two steps back. I know they will feel bad about this but this game was one we needed to win to have a good shot at play-off places, I know that there are a good few matches left but this one was really a throw away. Really really upset.

That's as may be. It was definitely a team failure (with one or two exceptions), it takes more than one poor performance for our (practically) strongest side to lose by 4 tries to a second string ospreys side. But there was one player out there's who could have pulled us back from the brink and failed. Multiple times in quick succession towards the end.

Opportunity lost. Lessons learned? Moving on...

We'd better put Dragons to the sword at home next week.

Look folks. Individual assignment of blame is great and all but that's not how the sport works. We had many poor performances tonight. Nothing Carty did was worse than Kelleher or TOH on your own critique.

Carty's lack of control and precision tonight was shocking. Absolutely shocking. Through his mistakes there was a four point swing to an Ospreys B team tonight that didn't deserve to win. The pack did fine. Blade and Godwin when they came on improved things, but the backs in general (including Bundee and Kieran M) were chyte. Very disappointing.

It was worth giving Fitzgerald a game, even 10 minutes, he could not have done any worse than carty, thought Marmion had a poor game needs to better that to start for Ireland

Well that was a shitshow. Absolute bloody shambles. Quite a few errors from a number of players in there, but I've got to lay that one on Carty. Some crucial missed touches and that attempted drop goal from halfway out the pitch. Very frustrating and well below the performance we should have seen from that team.

Can somebody who knows better than I please explain the logic behind Jack constantly belting kicks straight up the pitch? From where I was sitting it was at best causing us to constantly play on the back foot in our own half (unless an ospreys player cocked up and knocked on)....

Pathetic performance, got wat we deserved, carty cost us the game kicking and not making touch with 30seconds remaining, long season ahead judged on this performance.....

That was a poor loss, far the superior team and should have closed out the win. In fairness Ospreys defended well but got away with a lot at the breakdown I felt, our discipline was good I think 3 penalties none in the 2nd half, other than that though it's a huge missed opportunity and Ospreys getting 5 out of that is wild. Yet Another game that got away from us in the final 10 minutes, albeit we got ourselves back into it in the final quarter

Blew that - couple of terrible bits of defending for those first tries...

To gift them the game and bonus point in the last 30 seconds is an absolute sickener

To come off 7 nil down having been up a player for ten is pretty poor

Showed some great stuff to get back level but just so disappointed atm

I think it's Adamson.

Who's the ref?

Really looking forward to this - like the way Nigel Carolan put it “season shaping” as opposed to season defining....

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Mr Power has us as one point favourites now. I believe I have already made my feelings clear about being slight favourites ...

It clearly won't be easy. Having us underdog +1 to + 7 seems fair
A 4-1 split would be ok in my POV. A win would be a huge boost

salmson wrote:

Mark Mostyn wrote: Ospreys are starting 18 year old Tiaan Thomas-Wheeler at 12, need I say more.

They have the same number of internationals (7) as us, and nearly twice as many caps (if you take Lydiate out it's pretty even), and they're still favourites.

That said our odds have plunged towards even overnight and the spread has gone from 7 points to 1.

I was thinking more narrowly than that, about the prospect of Bundee running straight at him off first phase ball all night. I was surprised Leinster weren’t more ruthless in targeting N’Tamack last week, eventually Cian Healy ran straight over him and he went off injured. That being said it looks like the Ospreys kid is a big lad, 6 foot 2 and 98kg apparently.